I inspected my hive today, and I noticed some problems with my hive during my inspection (the following text has been copy pasted from an email I sent another beekeeper):
"Hive population seems to be declining rather than expanding. On March 16, I thought it was slightly smaller than a football, and I thought it had expanded a little by April 2, but now, I would say the cluster is the size of a baseball. There were about 3 brood frames on March 20; now (April 15) there are only 2 (each time I inspected, there wasn't much brood on the frames at all). I noticed some problems with the brood:
Perforated cappings; no signs of AFB or EFB, though. I "did" the matchstick test for AFB using a twig I found on the ground, and the pupae didn't have the discoloration associated with EFB. The pupae looked normal. However, there were several dead pupae just sitting in their cells without caps; the bees hadn't removed them yet. There was also a few half-grown dead pupae that the bees had pulled out of the cells sitting on the bottom board.
There was a tiny amount of dead bees in front of the hive, and a few dead bees sitting on the combs. I noticed a lot of poop on the front of the hive (I also noticed a much smaller amount on April 2), and there was some poop on the combs themselves; the bees even pooped on my gloves while I was inspecting the hive. Also, I noticed a few of the bees were acting sluggish/sick during the inspection. I'm suspecting they have dysentery, or maybe even Nosema. Can you tell me what you think is going on?
P.S. I noticed eggs during my inspection, so there was a laying queen present."
